Over 1 million Kenyans stop sacco savings despite jobs recovery
Some presidential aspirants in Kenya dole out millions of shillings to interest groups and churches with little political philosophy or cogent development blueprints.
More than 1.18 million Kenyans stopped making monthly contributions to savings and credit cooperative societies (saccos), suggesting a difficult recovery of the jobs market following the Covid-19 economic hardships.
Data from the regulator, the Sacco Societies Regulatory Authority (Sasra), shows 19.7 percent of the 5.99 million saccos members did not transact on their accounts for more than six months last year.
This came in a year when official data reported 926,100 jobs were added in the formal and informal sectors last year.
The growth in jobs came on the back of easing of Covid-19 restrictions, which had led to 736,000 job losses in 2020, suggesting a net hiring gain of 190,000 positions.
“During the year ended December 2021, there was a marginal increase of 3.03 percent of the membership in saccos from 5.82 million members reported in 2020 to 5.99 million members in 2021,” Sasra chief executive Peter Njuguna wrote in the annual supervision report.
“A large proportion of the members numbering 1.18 million were, however, reported as dormant, implying that they had not conducted any transactions with their respective saccos for more than six months.”
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